I'm not one to defend publishers or developers (I'm an IT change, release and configuration manager... and if you know what that is you can probably guess what my opinion of a typical application developer might be
), but as I said in another thread, what we're looking at here is the result of prioritizing against a deadline. For all we know, the devs were working right up until the 11th hour squashing crash bugs and the like... things that would have rendered the game literally unplayable (as opposed to the complaints I've read here that have been so characterized). What's left was probably categorized as manageable "post deployment".
I've also mentioned here before that, IMHO, we - the type of sub sim enthusiasts that hang out in forums like this and discuss things like conning tower railing placement and contour - obviously are
not the target audience for this game. A strategic decision made far above the level of the developers, I'm sure.
Once we're willing to accept that, I think it will be a lot easier for us to swallow some of the "questionable" design decisions that were made here and move on.
As someone pointed out up-thread, I think we should be at least somewhat grateful that UBI left us an out... the ability to mod the game. They did NOT have to do that. The ability to mod a game is not a given, or some kind of right.
Anyone who has played Oblivion or Fallout 3, and enjoyed the mods avalable for those games, was probably very disappointed, like I was, to find that Mass Effect 1 and 2 were not at all mod-able.
Another example of a game system that would benefit greatly through modding is Distant Guns and Jutland. However, the developer/publisher of those games, through either greed, ignorance or obstinancy (I suspect all three) chose to take active measures to prevent this.
That could very well have happened here, with SH5, as well. I'm sure the suits at UBI must have realized that at least some of what will be modded into SH5 (as with previous iterations in the series) could be easily produced in house, then bundled and sold through their U-Pay system. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that they had to be talked out of it. Now who could have done that, and why?
All speculation, sure, but I think it's far more likely than the alternative some of us tend to jump to directly - that the devs are evil, stupid or incompetent.
For myself, I would be all over this game - warts, arcade elements and all - if it weren't for the DRM. Now THAT is evil and stupid!
JD